Arden Park East Boston Historic District
The Arden Park East Boston Historic District is composed of 92 homes located on two streets - Arden Park and East Boston Boulevard - between Woodward and Oakland Avenue just to the east of Boston-Edison. The district received historic designation in May, 1981.
Originally called the McLaughlin's and Owens Subdivision, the development was platted on June 1, 1892 by Joseph R. McLaughlin and Edmund J. Owen, making the 1992 the District's centennial year. During the subsequent eighteeen years, the subdivision changed hands twice before being purchased by the prominent Detroit real estate developer, Max Broock, in 1910.
The subdivision quickly became an exclusive reisdential area for many of Detroit's newest entrepreneurs, including Frederic Fisher, John Dodge, Clayton and Albert Grinnell, Williard Pardridge, J.L. Hudson, and Stanley Kresge, Jr.
Beginning in 1940, the Arden Park East Boston area attracted number of prominent black professionals including Dr. Haley Bell, John R. Williams, Charles Diggs, Sr., Dr. Dewitt Burton, and Eugene Collins, a Ford Motor Company engineer who still resides in the home he built in 1949.
Today, the district is a diverse and racially mixed group of homeowners involved in maintaining and restoring the neighborhood's vintage homes. The Arden Park East Boston Historic District neighborhood association can be contacted through their website.